Google Ads vs. WordStream

Clients who are selling products such as dresses, clothes, jewelry, beauty products, etc., generally work well. Also, in some cases, it doesn't fetch a good ROAS for very small business owners. If a client is already doing well in SEO, the probability for it to perform well over Google Ads is always enhanced, and if it doesn't have a good organic reach, Google Ads also suffers.

Incentivized

Do you currently use Google AdWords to drive new business for your website? Then you need WordStream. The best scenario where it has helped me is time. I used to spend easily 20 hours a week analyzing data, making minor changes, adjusting budgets, trying to just master Google AdWords! But now I'm able to spend maybe 2-3 hours a week on Google AdWords and put the rest of my attention on other responsibilities. WordStream has mastered making my time more efficient.

Incentivized

• Keyword Research - Google Ads has a handy built in tool that helps determine important keywords to target both for Ads & SEO
• Intuitive Analytics Dashboad - Google Ads makes it fairly simple to see and analyze important metrics on how your ads are running week after week
• Intuitive Setup - Google Ads makes it easy to figure out how to run ads with little to no training (although training is highly recommended to run effective ads), as their interface is clean and easy to figure out (unlike competing products).

Incentivized

• Definitely go with a consultant. It amazed me how quickly our consultant was able to understand our business and what we sell. He was the best resource for our newly-digitized marketing team.
• The negative keywords section was a hugely helpful tool. It saved us from so much unnecessary spend while making it easy to add negatives.
• How quickly changes implemented were updated on AdWords was amazing. It's live, so no lag and unnecessary spend.

Incentivized

• If you don't know what you're doing, it will be a costly mistake. You need to target ads, and it is difficult the first time to do that.
• There isn't a feature to run an add for a couple set date spans, just hours you want to run them or a single date span.

Incentivized

• While the basic tools are pretty simple to use, the platform is actually pretty expansive and I don't feel like I've taken advantage of it (yet) as much as I could. It does require some training to get up to speed.
• Support for Display ad campaigns is limited - this is mainly used as a way to optimize Search campaigns.
• Reporting. I find the reporting setup to be a bit confusing and still rely on other sources for building out reports on our Adwords performance (Adwords itself and Google Analytics).

Incentivized

I think Google Ads is good for getting your company out there and becoming more visible to potential customers in general. However, for specific product launches, social media advertising might be a better fit. Also, our user base is younger so social media is a better channel for our target audience.

Incentivized

Affordable, useful, informative, easy to use, continually updating and staying current

Incentivized

I suspect that Google Ads is not for the novice user. I told my 'Ad Specialist' that I was not the best on computers and apprehensive about my ability to maneuver the website. He told me on more than one occasion that "I work for you...I'm your sherpa...call me any time or send me an email"!
The sales and service representatives for Google Ads are very well trained, though not much integrity. Despite that I told my Google Ad Specialist that my website was incomplete the ad was published live anyway! Beware that the 'talk' is good, but it ain't cheap!

We have not yet had an account rep who hasn't tried to bully me or other employees to raise our budgets. At the same time, several years ago, one attempted to help refine our ads and ended up changing the ads to be something we were not affiliated with

Incentivized

I have not had any experience with the customer support team for platform issues, but the account representative checks in with us often and is always available to answer questions. We will usually get on quarterly review calls so that she can share any new updates to the platform and answer questions.

Incentivized

Daily use with advanced account structures. Familiarity with reporting/api and complex setups.

Our agency invests heavily in Google Ads (particularly paid search advertising) on behalf of our clients relative to competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo because Google is the top search engine in the world. Google collects the most search data which enables the company to improve its AI to drive better performance for agencies and brands. As such, our paid search and app install campaigns always start with Google. If a client has a large budget, we will allocate media dollars to other search engines, but in some cases, the entire search budget goes to Google because we see the best returns.

Incentivized

WordStream is a little different from the competition. There are much more expensive solutions that manage the account for you with more features (Kenshoo, Marin, etc) and there are cheaper solutions out there that offer some of the features that WordStream provides; however, if a marketer wants to personally manage an account with some aided help than WordStream provides a great, cost-effective solution

Incentivized

• Google Ads is often one of our highest ROI channels, especially when you factor in branded ads.
• Depending on the stage your business is in, search ads can be really powerful from an ROI perspective, providing an investment with a very high spend cap.
• If you do not manage the campaigns well though, you can quickly spend a lot of money on nothing. So make sure someone is keeping an eye on your account.

Incentivized

• I've already noted the time savings that WordStream has provided - at leats 5 hours a week (and I like to think that my time is pretty expensive/worth it).
• Wordstream has paid for itself already, simply in removing junk from our AdWords account - junk keywords, junk AdWords groups, junk matching.
• I think we'll find, over more time, that Wordstream will continue to provide outstanding value in dropping our CPA - once Google register sthe lack of junk, our CPC will continue to go down.